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That's a hard no from me too.
Upvotes and downvotes exist to filter bad content. Anything that tracks points per user will just lead to toxic karma whoring and bots, as demonstrated by Reddit.
In my opinion, Lemmy shouldn't turn into a Reddit clone, it should learn from Reddit's plethora of mistakes.
Absolutely NO. Karma farmers were always annoying af, and it also makes people mean and annoyingly circle jerky about stuff.
I like the current system, you upvote/downvote posts and comments and that should be enough. No points attached to a user only to what they post.
Not just no, but heck no, and no algorithm either. Karma at a glance doesn't tell you anything about quality. High karma users can be anything from insightful posters to inflammatory shitstains to literally not even human. It's not useful for keeping new accounts from spamming - new accounts are created every single day en masse for the sole purpose of accruing karma by any means for the distinct purpose of being sold to spammers.
Karma also tanks discussions - every slightly big Reddit post is flooded with people repeating the same stupid "in"-jokes and puns that were funny 7 years ago by people and bots trying to boost their karma. The first few comment threads in every post become absolutely useless at best, and at worst, bots and bad faith actors clog up the pipes with ongoing spam efforts and purposely deceitful and manipulative misinformation campaigns that are demonstrably harmful to society.
Fake internet points is an outdated idea that imho, has shown itself to ultimately be bad for communities. I personally think that while Lemmy acts as a great alternative to Reddit there's no compelling argument for trying to make Lemmy an exact copy of Reddit. Lemmy doesn't need to be a one-to-one mirror image of a website that we're all literally fleeing because it's a giant shit pile. IMHO.
Karma ends up being the reason people post content - just look at Reddit and you see it; repost bots, people karma-whoring in comments, posting the same tired shit over and over just because it gets upvotes, etc.
We shouldn't need gamification to drive engagement. We're not a single corporate entity trying to drive profits. Early internet forums managed for a long time to get people participating because they wanted to participate, not because they felt the need to make an ultimately meaningless number go up.
Personally, my favorite thing about Lemmy (vs. Kbin specifically) is that there's no account-level karma equivalent. I would be very disappointed if it was ever added.
Perfect description, hands down.
Also, "Karma" isn't always a good metric for the quality of a post. On the contrary, even. At least in the subs I was a regular in, posts about in-depth guides, interactive maps, actually useful explanations etc. usually recieved very little recognition compared to (pardon my language) lazy, no-effort shitposts, reposts and memes.
Maybe, only maybe a "comparison" system could work, something like an upvote-to-downvote ratio without raw numbers ("username's karma is 98% positive and 2% negative" instead of "user has 45,992 Karma") so there is no real incentive to amass meaningless internet points but others could still see whether they're dealing with a troll if the "negative" side is noticably bigger.
..in the end, I'd still prefer a no-karma-at-all-system over anything else. Creating content for the sake of offering good content to the community, that's the best approach IMHO.
You said it better than I did.
In my humble opinion: Karma (mainly slashdot onwards, even though some Usenet groups had it) and other "Internet points" originally were meant as weeding tools to reassure other readers/commentators that the poster or commenter was respected/reputable and not only a troll/shill/other-individual-gain. This went haywire along the way (not only on Reddit, but much more aggravated on Reddit) leading to karma-farming accounts who gained more reach and lead. Such as the corvine posting guy who finally was banned by Reddit admins when he used alt accounts to upvote his and his ingroups comments, and downvoting every critics comments.
Alt-accounts and shill voting has been rampant, and you could even buy upvotes from karma farms or sell your karma-rich account to karma farmers or indirect advertisers. It has become a whole economy.
My silly cat, funny and gif photos on Fediverse are not intending to farm karma for myself, it's to increase content in subs, and just like on Reddit, the longer I'll be here the more I will lurk and less I will post.
I truly hope karma doesn't become a thing in the Fediverse. But I would ideally like a system where we can ignore or ban trolls, while rewarding content creators, level headed moderators and sound and just instances.
A karma metric would just hasten the decline that happened to Reddit. People liked OG Reddit as a forum to connect with like minded people. The karma situation lead to karma farm tactics with the goal of selling accounts or promoting commercial or political content. The lack of karma will remove a reason for bad actors to do the same here. It also removes the karma motivation for low effort reposts.
Comments should be voted on based on their contribution to the discussion. That's a natural way to guide the conversation in a productive direction.
I would prefer Lemmy et al to stay away from broad appeal BS like celebrity AMAs, and karma thirsty low effort people pleasers. It shouldn't be a place for special events, it should be a place for productive community conversation.
I sure hope not. It makes people just say whatever is performative or popular instead of anything insightful.
No, karma turned Reddit into a hive mind. Everyone knew what everyone expected in each community and would push people to stay in line in order to not get downvoted.
Personally, I like that the individual posts and comments have up/down votes. That allows the community to self moderate to some extent. That lightens the load on moderators to police bad content, while simultaneously promoting good content. It also means that the community rules do not need to be so heavy handed as to suppress dialog - take /r/conservative as an example.
But I do not believe that those votes should carry over to any kind of metric that affects users or communities in other ways. Perhaps a hidden metric available for moderators is useful for identifying problematic posters. But any kind of publicly visible metrics turn into some obnoxious internet point scoring game that invites shitposters and spammers and bot farmers.
Definitely no. In addition to the downsides you mentioned, I feel like the redditor's desire for karma is what causes these hiveminds/echo chambers and cliché comments that are so typical of many subreddits.
Edit: Thank you so much for the gold kind stranger!
Karma made Reddit toxic and limited the amount of conversing people did on the site. Here we can have conversations without worrying about down votes and Karma.
You can easily accumulate karma just by saying what everyone obviously wants you to say. I have 4 Reddit accounts with 6 figure karma and trust me, unless it's about a topic I am familiar with, what I have to say isn't any more insightful than some other person who has no or negative karma.
It shouldn't. Karma encourages the vices we've seen on Reddit like karma farmers, hive minds and threads full of unfunny jokes.
The karma system, as we former redditors know it, is susceptible to abuse (especially on a decentralized platform), results in a drive to repost popular content repeatedly, and is a poor representation of quality contributions. My vote would be no.
I am personally indifferent. Never really cared on all my accounts on Reddit.
No
Why? They are useless and some people go crazy about them.
Why should we copy the bad if we are trying to build something better
ABSOLUTELY NO!!!
Other websites with karma are full of bots who repost, a few year later, the content that was popular in the past, in order to mine reputation.
Karma also creates an echo chamber with self censorship where people won't post anything unpopular out of fear of loosing karma.
I like diversity of opinion. I don't want facebook, I don't want to read my opinion with a different phrasing.
No, karma isn't necessarily an indication of good quality. It's also easy to boost your karma on a decentralized social media by creating accounts on multiple instances and upvote your content
It leads to garbage tier repost trash.
You know what's funny? I think I voted more on comments here than my several years of reddit already. Having votes kept to individual comments instead of tallied up in your profile like this just feels better to me.
Site-wide karma is easy to game and not particularly informative. Community karma can be a good measure of how involved an account is in a specific community
No. Karma leads to all sorts of dumb behavior like reposting the same 5 videos every day, bots farming karma, hivemind because people are afraid to be downvoted into the negative, etc.. I've actually been thinking about creating a Reddit alternative that doesn't have voting at all, or at least not visible voting.
Nope, no need for karma whores.
Edit to explain: The karma system reddit has, is obviously detrimental to the quality of content. Some people see it as a game, and play for karma, rather than actually posting something that is meaningful to them.
Others put to much significance into it, and get bummed if they are not upvoted, because they think karma equals popular.
I like not having karma. It should be about content and context, not regurgitation.
I personally feel like community karma is a useful metric for quickly evaluating someone's presence in a specific community. Site-wide karma is far too easily-gamble to be a useful metric, though, and whether you had a post go crazy on a big sub means nothing in evaluating whether you're a good contributor to a small sub
No karma!
Lolz that's crazy... we should only take good ideas from Reddit.
I'm happy that most folks (in this thread, at least) seem to be of a similar mindset.
I struggled with Karma for a month, then I jumped on a few new 'DadJokes' and copy pasted a couple of puns - masses of Karma meant I could carry on trolling.
Votes are the way to push good/relevant comments upwards or downwards - and without value outside the thread, they'll only be used for that... as it should be.
Problem with a karma system, especially as it is handled over on Reddit, is that it will stifle dissent and promote circle jerking. You can vote controversial opinions out of sight even if they are totally valid but simply run contrary to popular opinions. If Lemmy got a karma system, it would have to work differently and allow for a healthy discourse.
I don't think so. I never payed attention to karma or gold or gifts at all. Tbh I never understood them and personally don't feel a need for any of it.
No. We don't need to make Reddit again. Let's do something else.
Anyone here old enough to remember slashdot? I liked their karma system. The maximum a post could get was +5, and I think the minimum was -1. I don't quite recall the details, but it was pretty effective. People didn't shamelessly karma farm because there wasn't any point. If you are at +5 there's nowhere else to go.
No Karmq ＝ No Karma farming...
Nah, karma isn't important. If we want an indicator of reputation I'd lean more towards a flair that the community can award.
No thank you.
Hard no on karma.
No
NO.
Absolutely not, karma was one of the worst parts of reddit
I think post karma and comment karma are very different things. Post karma is not as meaningful to me, because all it's really telling you is how badly someone wants to be a karma hog. But comment karma shows a little about someone's engagement and longevity. Only a little though. You can learn a lot more by interacting with users than by looking at their profiles.
I'd rather not. You'll have people farming the garbage and selling accounts a la gallowshill.
I couldn't really see the point at Reddit (seemed like an idea someone has once early on that got stuck) and I don't think it'd be that helpful here. If we are looking for ways to differentiate ourselves from Reddit, then that'd be one.
Let the quality of someone's account be measured by the quality of the posts they make.
No, absolutely not. It's too easily abused for people who cares about it, doesn't add any value to people who don't.
Glad to see how many folks are against it. Karma would not bring any value to Lemmy.
Definitely against karma. Some retard can say something smart once in a while, would you dismiss what he says based on his karma. Opposite is true, a smart ass can be completely wrong and yet have huge karma.
User karma on comment, not on people.
No
I don’t think it necessarily needs karma like Reddit, but I think a reputation system of some sort is going to be required for open federation to remain viable as federated systems grow. Just looking at account age and post history isn’t good enough if the bad actor owns a server and wants to put some effort into spamming or harassing people.
I think Karma was responsible for people always trying to make a witty comment and made them way to attached to their account. I don't think that it's a healthy system an can live good without it.